Aunt Ginny developed many health issues after retirement. Rheumatoid arthritis; mysterious infections in her arm that required heavy antibiotics and draining tubes; and finally diabetes. Despite being in constant pain she remained outwardly cheerful to me when we spoke. We’d not spoken in months when Uncle Jack called to tell me she was gone. Her leg amputation was not a success.
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Cedar Waxwing's 365 
I wonder if retirement was stressful for her. It happens.
I don’t think it was retirement, Susan. She and her sister (my Mom) had a falling-out over a misunderstanding and her husband insisted they move to Mississippi or anywhere to get away from Mom. If stress was the catalyst, it was stress from that situation. She and my Mom were very close before the estrangement.
Oh, that’s awfully sad.
Oh, this–the health stuff, the falling-out over a misunderstanding, the estrangement, the ending–is all so sad.
Yes, she was one of my favorite people, even after she quit talking to mom. So sad. I was briefly and secretly grateful for Mom’s condition when Ginny died (8 months before Mom died) because Mom would have been inconsolable had she remembered who Ginny was.
Oh, that is all so sad. How she must have felt before a leg amputation, I can’t imagine. And an estrangement over a misunderstanding is especially sad. And I understand your feeling about your mother’s condition in that respect.
According to my uncle, her husband, she was mostly worried that she’d have to go through it twice like her father had. He died after the second. Both her father and brother had leg amputations.
You hear that it is a risk for diabetes (my MIL has it), but I’ve never really known (directly or indirectly) of specific people who had to have amputations. Until now.
So much sadness in this post.
Yes. This one hurts.